“It doesn’t have to be any more complicated. We just have to be honest with each other.”
I don’t really know what I meant by that, because I wasn’t really being honest with her. I wasn’t even being honest with myself. I wanted this more than I could put into words, but I was afraid to ask myself why. Why would I want to marry this woman I barely knew? Yeah, she’d had it hard. Yeah, her mother was sick and it was putting an unfair burden on her shoulders, just like my sick brother had done to my family. I saw in her the things I’d left behind when I ran off to the Navy. I saw in her everything I’d wanted to fix in my own family, saw a way to make better what I couldn’t change in my own life. Was that the only reason I wanted to do this? I wasn’t sure. But I knew I’d say just about anything to get her to go along with this.
“When you went to Sutherland and asked Gray Wolf to intervene on your behalf, you asked for this. Let me do this for you.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
“Not a damn thing.” I walked to her and took her face in my hands. “Except more time with you.”
Her eyes were bright when she looked up at me. But she didn’t pull away and she didn’t argue. I kissed her gently, laughing against her lips when her mother walked in and announced that we should “Get a room!”
Chapter 15
At the Ranch
Sutherland stood back and watched Eve closely, worried for her good friend. She couldn’t believe that Kirkland was sanctioning this. If not for the fact that Eve herself had told Sutherland that this was what she wanted, she would have put a stop to it. She didn’t care what they did in their private time. It was too soon for Eve to know Grainger well enough to commit to him in this permanent sort of way. Sutherland didn’t even know him, and she’d sent him to the motel to pretend to be Eve’s husband. But to make it legal? This was insane.
If Eve is hurt by this…
Kirkland had promised that he’d vetted Grainger very closely, even going deeper into his military service than the complete dossier Ash had sent over. He swore that he thought his heart was in the right place in all this. It had better be. If Rachel knew what Sutherland was allowing Eve to do, she would destroy her with one look. Not that Rachel was even here. Couldn’t risk the poor woman having some dark, confused moment and disrupting the ceremony.
Life was so fucking unfair.
Sutherland couldn’t imagine what it be like to suffer from memory loss, the kind of memory loss that was destroying Rachel’s mind. If she missed her own daughter’s wedding because of some disease... that would be worse than death. And she knew Eve was missing her mother.
She might not agree with this whole farce, but she was going to be there for her friend.
Sutherland moved into position beside Eve and took her hand. Eve smiled, but the edges of her mouth shook, clear evidence of the nerves that were clearly plaguing her.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said softly, squeezing Eve’s hand.
“I wish I knew that for sure.”
“To be honest, I never would have imagined Grainger would be capable of this sort of selflessness when he first walked into this house. But when I look at him now, I can see something has changed. Something about being with you has changed him.”
“Really?”
Sutherland nodded. She was being honest, as honest as she could be. She didn’t see the point in telling Eve right now that Ash had called her and told her about Grainger’s broken engagement, or that he’d made a near fatal mistake in a case just after the break up that put another operative in mortal danger. She also didn’t see the point in telling Eve that Grainger was only here because of that mistake.
He was different now. She watched him come into the room, dressed sharply in a tuxedo Kirkland had arranged for him. There was something about the way he gazed across the room at Eve that reminded Sutherland of her own husband, Mitchell. They looked nothing alike, except maybe the bulky evidence of their strict military training. But there was something about the spark in his eye that reminded her of the morning Mitchell walked her down an aisle not so different to this makeshift one they’d created for this ceremony.
“He’s a good man,” Sutherland said, turning Eve to see her groom.
The justice of the peace cleared his throat as Grainger joined Eve at the head of the aisle, gazing so deep in her eyes she might have been the only person there. The young couple tore their eyes away from each other and focused on the stranger in a dark suit, secret smiles on their attractive faces.
They really did make a handsome couple.
“Marriage, like the ring used to symbolize it, is a circle. It goes round and round, never finding a way out. Even when things are rocky, there is still a road to follow, still a direction in which to go. There is no beginning, no end. There is just commitment.” The justice smiled as he nodded to first Grainger, and then Eve. “The two of you make a choice to make this commitment to one another today. By taking these vows, you promise not to just love and honor one another for the rest of your lives, but you vow to respect one another and this commitment you make.”
Sutherland glanced at Kirkland, wondering if he felt as much like a hypocrite as I did listening to those words. But he was nodding along with the justice, clearly lost in his own thoughts about his own marriage. It was funny to think about Kirkland standing in front of a justice like this one, committing himself to a woman who was so drastically different from him as Mabel was. But it was clear he loved her, clear that what they had was one of the good ones.
And that made Sutherland think of Mitchell.
She had always been on her own before Mitchell. She drifted from home to home, foster family after foster family. A few cared about her, a few even cried when she’d left – but not many.
Sutherland never felt like she belonged until the day Mitchell walked into her life. He had given her this look, and it had been like his soul was talking to hers, like they were two halves of a whole that had finally found one another. She had resisted him—God, she resisted him, and she so regretted it now. So much time wasted! But he won her over, and she would forever be grateful for it. They’d had so little time together—two weeks in the whole sum of it—but they’d lived a lifetime in such a short span of time.
It was supposed to be forever. He was supposed to come home and run this place, make a life with her. Sutherland wasn’t supposed to be this person. She wasn’t supposed to be stuck running a ranch when she didn’t know the first thing about cattle, let alone anything having to do with a rural life. She grew up in the city, for Christ’s sake! But she learned for him, for their daughter. She learned because she had no choice.
She would much rather have had Mitchell there by her side. She missed him with every fiber of her being. All she could do at that moment was wish that kind of love for Eve. If Grainger wasn’t that for her... She hoped that he wouldn’t tell her any time soon.
The thing was, she could see it written all over her face. Eve loved him.
She’d suffered enough in this life. If he hurt her…
Chapter 16
Grainger
I made her don a blindfold as soon as we pulled away from Sutherland’s house. She thought we were going back to the motel for another day of work, but I had a surprise in store for her and I wanted it to be a true surprise.
“I’ve got things to do. And Momma—”
“Angel has it under control. She’ll make sure everything’s taken care of and if there’s an issue, Marko promised to have the ringer on his phone turned up on high.”
“It’s not right to ask them to do this. They do so much for me.”
“They volunteered.”
“You didn’t tell them!”
“No. I just said I wanted to do something special for you and they immediately volunteered. They love you, Eve.” I reached over and took her hand. “They’d do just about anything for you.”
She didn’t have anything to say to that, but I knew she was tou
ched. I could see the way she bit her bottom lip, the way she turned her head away just slightly. I could also see the slight blush visible under the edge of the blindfold.
She really didn’t see how much people loved her. And that just added to the positive column in my mind that weighed the positive and the negative of her. The positive was definitely much longer than the negative. In fact, there really was no competition at this point.
We drove along the lane, the road growing lumpy the further along we got. Hank had told me about this place, giving me the keys three days ago, in order to set up this surprise. It was a little cabin set far back on the very back edge of MidKnight’s property. There was a story that circulated in town that it once housed the original Knight family when they first moved to Wyoming, but I suspected it was a hunter’s getaway built by a more modern patriarch of the family. Maybe even Sutherland’s father-in-law. Whatever its story, it was secluded, the perfect place for us to spend our wedding night.
I pulled the Bronco to a stop outside the cabin and walked around to help Eve out. She took my hand, her own shaking a little.
“Can I take it off now?”
“Not just yet.”
She groaned, but there was a smile on her full lips.
I led the way up to the front steps, turning to face her as I guided her up.
“There’s a step, in front of you. And another. Careful, it’s a little loose.”
She followed, moving carefully, but confidently. If that wasn’t proof of trust, I didn’t know what was. I backed my way across the narrow porch to the front door, letting go of one of her hands to reach behind me and turn the knob. I tugged her hand carefully, pulling her forward.
“There’s a little bit of a step, up there.”
“Where are we, Grainger?”
“Give me just a second, and then you can take off the blindfold.”
She groaned, but she continued to follow me into the room. I pulled her around to the side of the table, then decided I’d rather move her back a little so that she could see the room as a whole. I stood her right across from the huge picture window so that she could see the woods behind the cabin as well as the table that was carefully presented, complete with fine china Hank had stolen from somewhere—I was afraid to ask—and a bouquet of flowers Hank’s young assistant, Bobby, had brought up. And the bed, partially unmade and covered in rose petals, up against the far wall.
I held her hands for a moment longer, my thumb moving over the new gold bands I’d purchased just yesterday in Casper. I didn’t want to wear Kirkland’s cheap bands after the ceremony. It felt like new ones were required to make it official. And the tears in Eve’s eyes when she realized what I’d done solidified that belief.
“Alright,” I said softly.
I stepped out of her line of sight as she pulled the blindfold over her head. She gasped a little when she saw everything, her eyes moving from one thing to the other like a child on Christmas morning. She laughed when she saw the flowers, stepping forward to touch the silky petals.
“How did you know I loved white carnations?”
I hadn’t. But I was glad to know it now.
I moved up behind her and slid my arms around her waist. “I thought you should have a proper wedding night. And this... it was the best I could come up with.”
“You say that like this is nothing. But it’s everything.” She turned in my arms and smiled up into my face. “You’re too much.”
“I don’t know about that. I just want to make you happy.”
“You are making me happy.” She turned again, studying the table. “This is so much better than the night I was expecting.”
“And what was that?”
“I bought frozen pizzas at the IGA. I thought we’d just stay in and watch a movie, or something.”
“Sorry. No television here.”
She laughed, but it sounded as much like a sob as a giggle. She leaned back against me for a moment, then sighed.
“Is it bad that I’m just totally exhausted?”
“Nope. In fact, that’s why dinner isn’t set out already. I thought you might want to take a bath first.”
“You did think of everything.”
“I try.”
She pulled away, walking over to the picture window. She stood there a long moment, looking out into the woods.
“I grew up playing in these woods. Did you know that?”
“No.”
She nodded. “My mom and Sutherland were good friends before... before Momma got sick. She’d bring me out here for their little get togethers, and I’d take a horse and come down here with whoever happened to be available. Usually it was one of the stable boys.”
“Yeah? Should I be jealous?”
She blushed, glancing back at me with this warm smile on her beautiful lips.
“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “There was this one guy, he was about a year older than me. We snuck in here—back then this place was a mess—and he kissed me right here under this window. It was my first real kiss and I think I smiled for a week afterward.”
“Did you come back with him?”
“Just once after that, but it was never the same again.”
“Good.”
She shot me a dirty look. “You think it’s good that I got my heart broken?”
“No. I think it’s good that some punk kid didn’t take advantage of my future wife.”
“I don’t know who was taking advantage of who back then. I think we were kind of using each other.”
“You were an innocent. I doubt he could have claimed the same.”
She shrugged, glancing back at me again. “It’s kind of nice that you brought me here. It’s like coming full circle, sort of like the metaphor the justice of the peace used during the ceremony, only more about my life as a whole than just this marriage thing.”
“This marriage thing?”
She turned back to the window. “You know what I mean. I think this is a good omen about the future.”
I moved up behind her and slipped my arms around her shoulders, tugging her back against my chest. “I think it is, too.”
She twisted around, reaching up on her tiptoes to kiss me. Then she slipped away, disappearing into the small bathroom at the end of the short hallway. I stood there, staring out at the woods, thinking about things I hadn’t expected to entertain today. I thought about the scene that unfolded outside a similar picture window in my parents’ home, a picture window that looked out on my dad’s fields, on the houses that seemed to constantly be encroaching on them. I thought about my brother, how he used to play in the corn when it was still short enough to not get lost in. I thought about my father, sitting on the back of his tractor, singing some old folk song at the top of his lungs. And I thought about my mother, her knuckles deep in bread dough, watching it all from the narrower kitchen window.
I’d fooled myself into thinking I didn’t care, that leaving home didn’t matter. The truth was, I never stopped missing it. There are some things you just can’t move beyond.
I wondered what my mother would think of Eve. I knew without a doubt that Dad would love her. But Mom? She’d be the tough sell. She was always very tough to impress when it came to matters of the heart. But I was sure she’d fall in love with Eve before a single night’s dinner dishes were done.
That idea made me smile.
Too bad they would never have a chance to meet.
***
I drew Eve over to the couch when dinner was done, tugging her down onto my lap as we settled facing the picture window. The sun was slowly going down, the day passing into the history books as we curled up together to digest our decadent dinner. Hank had promised to send up something good, but he hadn’t told me it would be the most tender pot roast I’d ever tasted. I wanted to take credit for it, but Eve knew better than I did that it was a very generous gift from the lady of the ranch herself.
“She used to make this on Sunday afternoons and invite me
and Momma up to share it.”
“How did you ever survive childhood without becoming Violet Beauregard?”
Eve laughed. “I actually used to wish I could blow up to the size of a massive blueberry. It looked so cool in the movie!”
“Blue’s a good color on you.”
She shook her head. “Not really, but thanks for the thought.”
I ran my hand down along her back, searching for the hem of the soft baby doll she’d put on after her bath. She smelled like roses, her hair clinging to the vague strawberry scent of her shampoo. I pressed my face against her head, breathing in everything about her. She moved a little, brushed her lips against my jaw.
I don’t think I’d ever wanted anyone quite the way I wanted her in that moment. And it was a lingering moment, one of those that seems to last forever. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to break contact with the feeling of that instant in time. I wanted to hold her, wanted to feel her, wanted to do things to her that she’d never even imagined before. But not yet. For that moment, I was completely content to just breathe her in, to just live in that cocoon of desire.
And then she touched me and the magic of the moment shifted.
Her hand slipped over my jaw, her fingers brushing the hair beginning to grow out just above my ears. She hooked a finger under my chin and lifted my face to hers. Our lips brushed and it was like the first time all over again. I lifted her, twisting her on my lap so that she was straddling me, my hands sliding over her bare ass under the floppy edges of her baggy shorts. I’d guessed she wore no panties, but the proof was more erotic than the guess could ever have been. I moaned against her lips, moaned as I tugged her closer against me.
The need was becoming overwhelming. As much as I wanted to take my time, as much as I wanted to taste and feel every inch of her body, the need was driving me too hard and too fast. All the teasing, all the anticipation that came before this moment was just too much.
“You’ve got to stop,” I whispered against her mouth.
Gray Wolf Security: Wyoming Page 27
